Cyberbullying and School Climate

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between demographic variables known to predict bullying and victimization, traditional bullying victimization, cyberbullying victimization, and school climate. Participants were 214 fourth and fifth grade students from three elementary schools in Warren County, Kentucky. Students answered demographic questions and completed a series of surveys including the Positive Experience Checklist and the School Climate Survey Suite. Demographic variables and traditional bullying victimization were regressed on the students’ perception of school climate (Model 1). Additionally, cyberbullying victimization was included in a second block to estimate its explanatory value (Model 2). The present study supports previous research that found that traditional bullying is related with a lower perception of school climate and extended this research by examining the relation between cyberbullying and school climate; of interest, are the impacts of cyberbullying on meaningful outcomes (e.g., school climate) of a sufficient magnitude to warrant changes in preventative and intervention strategies? Interestingly, cyberbullying had a negligible but significant effect on school climate, only explaining an additional 3% of the variance in student perception of school climate. These data indicate that cyberbullying victimization is much less predictive of perceptions of school climate than traditional victimization